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Leila Kamal, AIA, NCARB, LEED AP BD+C

Vice President of Design & Expertise

Leila is responsible for visioning and implementing EYP’s expertise-driven design philosophy through the development and integration of intellectual content into smart, sustainable design. To inform design innovation, she also guides the firm’s strategic research program, whose major initiatives currently range from building science to understanding how the built environment impacts the human experience.

Leila has played an active role in the planning, programming, and design of classrooms, student interactions spaces, and innovative learning environments at numerous colleges and universities. Her most recent clients include MIT, Emory University, Wheaton College, Keene State College, and the University of Michigan.

The most successful colleges and universities we know with new STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) buildings have not merely built new buildings, they have rethought them from the ground up. These institutions have radically redesigned them — either building entirely new structures or dramatically renovating existing ones — in ways that have improved professors’ teaching and students’ learning processes. The impacts, which EYP has tracked during the last 10 years and chronicled in our formal research studies, have been eye-opening in four dimensions: student enrollment and retention; faculty recruitment; learning experience; research and collaboration opportunities. More

Amidst research and reports showing that a third of U.S. post-secondary institutions are struggling financially, many of them see a highly competitive STEM program as a key to their future success and survival. More

We systematically investigate the impact of the spatial environment itself on student engagement, perceived experience, and sense of community. Our investigations at Michigan State University build on our living-learning research at the University of Michigan to provide evidence to how the architectural design of college residence halls impacts student engagement and development. More

As American colleges and universities increasingly recognize the value of educating the “whole student,” the effect of campus residential life on various student outcomes – campus engagement, peer interactions, etc. – has been the subject of ongoing study. EYP is one of the first to systematically investigate the impact of the spatial environment itself on student development, attitudes, and outcomes. Our Living-Learning research findings offer colleges and universities, as well as architects and builders, key insights into how space types and usage impact student learning and development, so that they can maximize resources to enhance student experience. More

Our mission is to design buildings that improve the quality of science education. To go beyond anecdotal evidence that it is fulfilling this mission, we aim to develop a plan to systematically evaluate its designs. More